Deja vu all over again

1.  What a game. Fun stuff. It's always amazing to me how close the odds-makers pick the spreads, even on the prop bets. Just an example -- the over/under on Kelly Clarkson's rendition of the National Anthem was 1:34 and she came in at 1:34 exactly.

2.  Best ad of the game:

3. In the other big game over the weekend, the Canes beat Duke in NC for the first time. Bubble team right now...

4. Closer to home, there is a debate about the word "Gypsie":

A Fort Lauderdale family of accused psychic swindlers has come under fire for allegedly conning clients out of $40 million, but one defense attorney in the case says the fortune-telling business isn’t the only thing on trial — the family’s ethnic heritage, too, has become a target. At issue: the word “gypsy,” which has been mentioned several times in the case against the Marks clan, a three-generation psychic family of Romanian Gypsy descent. Defense attorney Fred Schwartz says the word constitutes a slur, and is comparable to the N-word being leveled at African-Americans. “The connotation of the word ‘gypsy’ is a group of wandering people who go from city to city committing crimes,” said Schwartz, who accuses prosecutors of employing the word as a “tactical advantage” that will make the Marks family seem guilty. The case is expected to go to trial later this year. ***

Hogwash, say prosecutors, who insist there’s nothing inherently derogatory about saying gypsy. In court filings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurence Bardfeld said all the G-word hoopla amounts to nothing more than a defense team “trying to ‘muddy up the waters’ in an attempt to discredit the government.” Bardfeld noted that defense attorneys, too, had used the disputed word in open court, and he even cited several dictionary definitions of the word as further proof of its inoffensiveness. From the Oxford English Dictionary: “A member of a wandering race (by themselves called Romany), of Hindu origin, which first appeared in England beginning of the 16th [century] and was then believed to have come from Egypt.” Lastly, Bardfeld singled out one of the family members on trial, Ricky Marks. Marks has posted several family videos on YouTube in which he uses the word gypsy, including a “Gypsy Super Bowl Trip” video that also showcases the family’s collection of luxury cars — the fruits of their lucrative psychic enterprise.

5.  Yes, Rumpole, Justice Scalia even says he is "defendant-friendly."

6.  And from my favorite item of the weekend, the inmates in Vermont are pretty funny:

Prison inmates who make decals for the Vermont State Police slipped a pig into the official seal, and up to 30 patrol cars wound up sporting the subliminal epithet, the Burlington Free Press tells us. The police emblem features a cow, an evergreen tree and snowy mountains (along with three unidentifiable creatures). Back in 2008, an inmate artist at the Northwest State Correctional Facility went into the computer file and modified one of the cow's spots to resemble a pig, the common derogatory term for police, Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito told the Free Press, like USA TODAY a Gannett paper. In 2009, the state police ordered 16-inch door decals. Pallito said he believes 60 altered decals were made. Some new cruisers have two, while older cars may have just one if a door was replaced. New decals, costing $780, are expected Monday. State officials learned of the prank Thursday. They blamed quality control at the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Alban. Prison authorities are trying to identify the inmate behind the Rorschach test.